2024 Gulf of Maine Ventures Impact Report

Our Gulf of Maine Ventures program is the first point of contact for many early-stage entrepreneurs seeking business-building support, access to waterfront testing sites, and connections to regional facilities and expertise. We focus on supporting innovative founders creating solutions that enhance sustainability and efficiency across blue economy sectors relevant to the Gulf of Maine region. Solutions focused on sustainable seafood production, ocean-related climate challenges, marine technology, and renewable energy innovations.

While we support scalable programming to meet our market demand, we also meet with companies to offer one-on-one advice on product-market fit, industry connections, technical resources, revenue and market strategy, and investment structures.

In 2024, we completed two programs:

• The BlueTech Boost, a 10-week incubator program, tailored to assist early-stage companies with direct and milestone-based support.
• The Blue w(AI)ve, a 16-week hybrid accelerator focused on ocean climate startups leveraging AI in their product development. We paired each company with a “Scientist-in-Residence” from GMRI (or relevant partner institution) to advance their technology, an “Investor-in-Residence” from Bold Ocean Ventures or Maine Venture Fund, and an “AI-in-Residence” from The Roux Institute — an equivalent of a $25,000 consulting project with their in-house AI experts. By surrounding founders with a suite of experts assigned to directly work with each company, we bolstered their connection to industry, validated their product road maps, and ultimately increased the odds of their business scalability.

Over the past three years, we focused on expanding and deepening our investor relationships. We also raised awareness about investment opportunities in the blue economy to strengthen the North Atlantic ecosystem through thought leadership content, events, ongoing partnerships, and direct investor engagement. A key value of our partnership with Bold Ocean Ventures lies in providing investors with in-depth blue economy insights and diligence work, to help validate opportunities and understand company trajectories.

Event Highlights

In 2024, we organized a number of events aimed at establishing a formal commercialization and investment platform to connect blue economy entrepreneurs with investors and industry stakeholders.

• Blue Economy Summer Series: We launched a three-year educational speaker series focused on exploring the opportunities and challenges in Maine’s emerging blue economy. The 2024 Blue Economy Summer Series focused on innovations in sustainable seafood practices, coastal resilience, and the untapped potential of microalgae. Each event provided an in-depth look at innovations addressing global ocean challenges, with contributions from economic development experts, scientists, industry professionals, and entrepreneurs. These events broadened our network and outreach to potential investors and startups.
• Rural Innovation Summit: An invite-only event for investors and innovators focused on the blue economy in rural Maine. Participants learned about the growing startup ecosystem, the current blue economy investment landscape, heard directly from rural entrepreneurs scaling their businesses, and toured American Unagi and Brunswick’s TechPlace.
• Second annual Blue Venture Investment Summit: We co-hosted the second Blue Venture Investment Summit-Maine with Blue Venture Forum and drew over 190 attendees, half of whom were from out of state. The summit showcased ocean data and AI innovations, highlighting Maine's growing influence in the blue economy. Participants shared overwhelmingly positive feedback, and we learned that last year’s summit directly contributed to two companies successfully completing their fundraising efforts through connections made at the event.

Thank You to our Funders

Our work is possible through the generous support of our funders — the Economic Development Administration, Builder's Bridge, Maine Technology Institute, the Small Business Administration, and private donations. Their invaluable contributions are instrumental in propelling our mission forward, and we express our sincere gratitude for their ongoing support.

Looking Forward to 2025

We are excited to increase our programmatic impact by continuing to develop resources and events to build company investment readiness and increase investor knowledge of ocean-focused opportunities.